A troubadour was a poet who was also a singer, travelling between the castles and courts of southern Europe — mainly southern France and northern Spain and Italy — in the 1100s and 1200s. He wrote his own words and music, and performed them for lords and ladies.

What he sang about matters. Troubadours are the people who gave Europe its idea of romantic love: the knight who serves a lady he cannot have, love as suffering, love as something noble. Much of how English and Chinese pop songs still talk about love traces back through this line.

A useful correction: many troubadours were not poor wanderers. Some were nobles themselves, and some were women. The picture of a ragged man walking from village to village with a lute is a later, romantic invention. If you want the man who only performed other people's songs, that was a minstrel or jongleur — the troubadour was the maker.

Today the word is used loosely and warmly for a singer-songwriter who travels and writes their own thoughtful songs. Newspapers love calling folk musicians "a modern troubadour". It sounds a bit literary, always a compliment.

Say it roughly TROO-ba-door. It is a French word and keeps its French look.